


On the River

by Vana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Amazon Exploration, Alternate Universe - Historical, Davos is George Cherrie, Hurt/Comfort, Insects, M/M, Spiders, Stannis is Theodore Roosevelt, The River of Doubt AU, also someone gets seriously injured and i talk about that briefly, if you have phobias of bugs you probably won't like this at all, just go with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 13:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3448457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a dark, treacherous tributary of the Amazon River in the early 20th century, Captain Stannis Baratheon leads an expedition. Naturalist Davos Seaworth gets closer to the realities of nature than he would have liked, and the captain faces certain death without him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the River

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hedge_witch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedge_witch/gifts).



The rain fell relentlessly, three times a day, but without enough regularity that the men could predict when the deluges would occur and get under cover. When the downpour stopped, the air would breathe with humidity, steaming the tired crewmen and officers dry but leaving their clothing and provisions soaked and molding.

Captain Stannis Baratheon stifled a sigh as in his sodden tent he pulled on a wet pair of socks. Uncomfortable as it was, the wool would still offer meager protection against the insects and snakes -- not to mention piranhas -- that were part of the expedition's life now, and haunted them day and night. Already Stannis had been saved from a pit viper bite by a quarter inch of thick leather boot, and he had no intention to go without footwear, wet or otherwise.

* * *

The naturalist wiped the fog off his binoculars as he leaned in to get a better look at a fire ant. He pulled his gloves on tighter -- it wouldn't do to have the little buggers crawling up his sleeves -- and watched as the colony's scouts wended their incomprehensible ways across the leaf and branch. All around him the rainforest shimmered with life, embodied in this tiny red creature that was magnified under his intent gaze.

"Mr. Seaworth, sir," cried one of the native crew, crashing through the lianas and vines, breaking Davos' reverie. "Come quickly ... Captain is hurt."

"Where's the bloody doctor?" Davos muttered to himself, following the crewman back at a run across the wet ground. When he reached the little campsite, his question was answered and his stomach turned. A man -- one of the rowers -- had been rescued from the rapids of the black tributary they were fighting every day, but his life seemed to hang in the balance as the doctor worked feverishly over him. The rower's face and neck were gashed by the unforgiving rocks of the river, but worst of all was his leg -- a snapped bone stood out from the torn flesh horribly, and Davos, for all his wilderness experience, could not look.

"Captain is inside," the other man said, picking at Davos' sleeve in his impatience. "There is no one else ..." 

Davos nodded. "Thank you, Joao," he said, hoping he had not made a mash of the man's name. "I'll see to him."

Davos and Stannis Baratheon had traveled together on one other safari, a comparatively tame hunting trip in Kenya and Tanzania in 1904. They had forged a close friendship based on shared love of the outdoors and mutual respect for the other's strength and temerity, but afterwards they had parted at the dock in New York City -- Davos had headed to the high deserts of Montana and Idaho for several years and Stannis had stayed in the East, teaching and writing.

Stannis despite his customary reserve had been quite obviously glad to reunite with Davos at the mouth of the Amazon tributary. "Thank God, at least one capable man on this voyage," he'd said with the shadow of a smile. For his own part, Davos knew that another wilderness expedition with such a man at his side would be far more enjoyable than he had ever hoped to experience again.

Now he hesitated before the closed tent. Had Stannis been in the rapids as well? In what state would he find the captain? It was hard to imagine Stannis in any sort of weakened state. He took a steadying breath and opened the flap, calling softly as he went to avoid startling the captain.

The tent was so dark in the shadows that for a moment Davos could not see. 

"They finally found you," said Stannis from the pallet of blankets on the floor. His voice was fainter than usual but it still had some of its crisp snap. 

Davos went to his side and knelt. "What's happened to you?"

The captain's face was pale, with spots of red high on his cheeks. Fever, Davos knew. Either he had come down with malaria or--

"A bloody spider," Stannis ground out, angry. "I learn the fifteen types of venomous snakes in the rainforest, I watch so carefully for scorpions that I begin to see them in my dreams, I cover myself with mosquito netting to protect against malaria, and then a spider the size of a nickel brings me down."

Davos mentally flipped through his guide of the spiders of the southern continent. There were several it could be, but the small size of this one confounded him. 

"And before you ask, I didn't speak to Doctor Cressen. You see what he's got his hands full with out there by the fire. No, Davos, it was you or no one. Even if you can't cure me, at least you can talk to me while I die, if that's my fate."

"You aren't going to die," Davos said in alarm, laying his hand across Stannis' arm. The skin seemed to steam with fever. What on earth kind of spider could it have been?

"Where did the bastard get you?" 

"Ankle," Stannis said, wincing. "I'm lucky it wasn't my foot but I had on the socks and boots, else I would lose my foot for sure. Never go out without your footwear, Davos." He grabbed Davos' wrist. "Promise me that."

"I give you my word." This intensity was all wrong for Stannis, Davos thought. He was severe, but not ... intense, not insistent. Davos felt himself growing warm as the captain kept his hand tight around his wrist. "No bare feet until we get home."

Stannis seemed satisfied. He let Davos go and allowed him to lift the hem of his khakis up to just above the sock line, where an angry red bite had erupted and spread purplish lines out and up Stannis' leg. "That's not good," Davos muttered. "In the blood."

He hadn't had enough experience with field medicine to feel confident -- and he had no idea what on earth could have bitten the captain -- but doing something seemed to be better than doing nothing.

"Joao," he called out. The crewman put his head into the tent, and with the rush of air came sounds from outside -- the hurt rower moaning, and the doctor barking out commands to other men.

Davos forced his attention away from all that. "Please go to my tent and get me salt -- it's in the crate near the door, in a blue tin. In the same crate you will find a medical kit -- a white box with a red cross. Bring that as well, and quickly, if you would be a good man."

"Yes, sir," said Joao, departing so hastily that the breeze from the closing tent flap ruffled Stannis' tousled hair. 

"Salt?" Stannis asked lazily. His voice was growing fainter and his fever higher with each passing minute. Davos groped around for a canteen or skin of water, and when he found it he let some fall into his hand and smoothed it over Stannis' forehead. Then he waited, listening to Stannis' breathing go from even to ragged and then back to even. It was even odds whether he would live, but ...

The crewman returned with the medical kit, the salt, and seven or eight other tins beside. He dumped them all next to Davos and retreated.

From everything Davos knew of spider bites, treating it would take a mixture of pain relief and antivenom. And something to bring down that fever.

From one of the tribesmen they had encountered at the mouth of one of the milky tributaries, Davos had learned that sometimes the healers used a mixture of honey, saltwater and vinegar for insect bites.

There was no honey in the camp. Davos sprinkled salt in his hand and added a splash of water, and stirred it with his finger into a paste, which he applied gingerly to the bite on Stannis' leg. 

The captain jerked, and grabbed Davos' other hand, holding the fingers together in a vice grip. As the saline sunk into the wound, the sting must have grown less because Stannis let his grasp slacken slightly. 

"Damn," he swore, "that's not easy stuff, that."

"No," Davos agreed. "And I'm afraid it will get worse before it gets better. Joao!"

Again the crewman appeared; again Davos sent him to his tent. 

"Vinegar?" Stannis said, made more alert by the jolt of pain, looking up at the bottle Davos was holding. "Are you going to season me and eat me?"

Davos could only smile at that -- a fond, small smile that lasted longer than he had intended it to. He was glad the captain could still find it in him to joke. But the good feeling lasted only a moment before Stannis broke into another copious sweat, which soaked his forehead and roll of clothing under his head as surely as if he were outside in the rain. It was now or never.

Davos, holding his breath, poured a spoonful of vinegar onto a cloth, then slapped the cloth on Stannis' ankle. His hand was seized in a tight grip again, but this time he expected it and held on firmly, absently stroking Stannis' thumb with his own. He felt the captain relax slightly. The beads of moisture stood out on Stannis' face, which was a startling mottle of dark pink and greenish-white. He told himself it was kill or cure and his captain was dying anyway. The heaviness of that truth held Davos' heart down like a stone.

Stannis tried to twist his foot under him to relieve the pain, but he was too weak. His face contorted and he seemed to be speaking, but Davos could barely catch a word. 

The sun was going down outside, and from the flash of the fire through the wet canvas Davos knew the men were gathering for dinner. He wondered about the rower, but mostly his thoughts were on Stannis, shivering with fever and clutching his hand.

"If I die here," Stannis blurted, in a sudden spasm, "Davos, if I die here, I'm glad ..."

A shudder shook him so hard his teeth chattered, but after a moment, he began again. "If I die here, I'm glad, because at least I can die with you by my side."

Davos was thunderstruck. He had never thought that the captain even knew, let alone returned his deeply hidden, long-buried affections. "Stannis ..."

"I never stopped thinking of you," Stannis went on, with his head rolled to one side and the sweat still pouring off him. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be speaking in a dream. Davos wondered if he, himself, were also dreaming. 

"Nor I you," Davos confessed. "That time in Kenya was the happiest of my life."

"In Kenya," Stannis echoed. "I remember. The lake at Karagita where you caught us all supper, and the inn where the settlers and the Masai were fighting over whether there was a spirit in the oil lamp ... Why did you leave me in New York?"

Davos was startled from his African reverie by this demand. "Why, I ... I could hardly do anything else. I was set to be studying the Rocky Mountain watershed, and your career was in the East ..."

"Damn my career," the intrepid captain spit out, "and damn your watershed. It's _you_ I want."

Davos knew the man was dying, but he was still strangely elated. If these were the last words they exchanged, they would be worth it, he felt.

"If we should come out of this alive, you shall have me," he promised, laying a tender kiss on the damp, furrowed brow. "I promise you that."

* * *

During the next portage, Davos took responsibility for a heavy wooden crate of provisions over the hastily hewn path along the black river. 

"Put that down, what do you think you are doing?" a rough voice said behind him. Despite the heat, Davos shivered. 

"What are you doing walking? Shouldn't you be--"

"I won't be carried on the shoulders of the natives like some kind of conquistador," Stannis snapped. "Doc Cressen says I should be fine as long as I take it fairly easy today and tomorrow while we portage, and if I walk with a support." He gestured to a long stick he held, stumping along with it impatiently.

"And the wound?"

"Sore and itchy, but harmless besides that," the captain said. "Cressen said it mustn't have left its full load of venom, or I'd have died for sure. What's more, he said you did as good a job as he would have with no medicine and only a cooking tin to treat me with."

Davos flushed. "I'm glad."

"Yes, as am I. Once again I owe you my life."

"Once again?"

"In Africa, at the lake by Karagita ..."

"I caught us dinner," Davos finished, half breathless.

"And you gave me something to look forward to. Don't ever forget that, Davos. Now come, let us walk together."

**Author's Note:**

> The Roosevelt River, aka the River of Doubt, aka Rio Teodoro. [[map](http://www.freemansexplore.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/river-of-doubt-map-web.jpg)]
> 
> Stannis and Davos' safari in Kenya passed Lake Naivasha [[map](http://www.gobeyond.travel/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Naivasha-map.jpg)] [[photo](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Quiet_dusk_over_Lake_Naivasha_%285232083375%29.jpg/1280px-Quiet_dusk_over_Lake_Naivasha_%285232083375%29.jpg)].
> 
> This is the [Blue Post Hotel](http://www.masaiafricasafaris.co.ke/hotels/bluepost.jpg) where they witnessed the argument about the lamp, which is an event I took from one of my very favorite books in the world, [The Flame Trees of Thika](http://www.amazon.com/The-Flame-Trees-Thika-20th-Century/dp/0141183780/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0G5KZ4MG2EVXJPMHKWPW).
> 
> Inspired by [this book I'm reading](http://www.freemansexplore.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/river-of-doubt-map-web.jpg) and written in lieu of real-life comfort for C.


End file.
